Bodley Mansion Entrance (Castlevania 2)

ScottHoneycutt

This is a still based on a screen from Castlevania 2 for NES. Rendered in UDK, Modeled in 3ds Max, textured in Photoshop and the normals were generated in X-Normal via height maps. I modeled this back in the winter but never finished it until now. I'm surprised at how well it turned out but I'd like to hear how everyone else thinks. Thanks!

ScottHoneycutt

Over a year later I have a new version of this image. The previous was shown in Unreal, while this is my first attempt at using the Xoliul shader in 3ds Max. I remade the textures a bit and believe this version to be a bit more interesting. The old ground needed to go. All thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

DougClayton4231

It looks nice Are you planning on adding some of the holes from the NES shot?

sushi

The scene looks great to start, although it could be greatly improved with debris and detail on the ground, and more focus on lighting. Are you using specular maps?

SergeiMirminski

I don't feel like that type of rock was used in medieval castle construction. It looks like sheet rock on the side of a cliff. In the reference the stone is cut into linear blocks.

Dennispls

I'm with Sergei here that the wall material does not look believable. I also feel the noisyness of the textures is very high. The normalmap does not help with that either as it looks like it was generated by a normalmap filter in photoshop.
Try to establish a clean material and add detail from there.

gsokol

I would really consider using tiling textures instead of having everything uniquely unwrapped like that. Your tiling the textures on the unique sheets anyways....

ScottHoneycutt

Here's an update. The next step here for me is to continue to experiment and research the Xoliul shader's lighting ... not having much luck just yet getting it to do what I want.

Thanks so much for the advice everyone. There are no spec or normals seen here.

DWalker

I think you've misinterpreted the structure to either side of the doorway. I think they're supposed to be open gates, rather than a fence. The opening should also be wider -it looks to be ~4 door widths.

The outer wall should be taller, and the gateposts thicker, and their tops should be even with the tops of the spikes on the wall.

ScottHoneycutt

I simply can't get the shadows with the Xoliul Shader to show. They do render but they aren't showing in the viewport. I placed the render over top of the image to show what I mean. I've tried moving the lights, changing the shadow types and so forth to no avail. I'm not going to lie, this same problem was the reason I moved from the UDK to this shader (no shadows). If I can't figure this out then I may switch back to Unreal which at least has a lot more documentation online for research purposes. The ground is one big flat unwrap without any UV pieces over lapping so I don't see why that would be an issue. Thoughts?

ScottHoneycutt

OK so here I am back in UDK. I remade the maps, lighting and camera. Thoughts?

ScottHoneycutt

I pretty happy with this for now. I do want to figure out how to fix the shadow artifacts I'm getting. I'm thinking there has to be a check box somewhere to fix the blocky lines I'm getting in the shadows. I haven't been able to find anything online so far. Thanks again.